China’s birthrate drops to historic low

China announced Monday that its birthrate plummeted for a fifth straight year in 2021, moving the world’s most populous country closer to the potentially seismic moment when its population will begin to shrink and hastening a demographic crisis that could undermine its economy and even its political stability.

The falling birthrate, coupled with the increased life expectancy that has accompanied China’s economic transformation over the past four decades, means the number of people of working age, relative to the growing number of people too old to work, has continued to decline. That could result in labor shortages, which could hamper economic growth and reduce the tax revenue needed to support an aging society.

The situation is creating a huge political problem for Beijing, which is already facing economic headwinds. Along with the demographic data, the country reported Monday that growth in the last quarter of the year slowed to 4 percent.

China’s ruling Communist Party has taken steps to address the birthrate decline by relaxing its notorious “one child” policy, first allowing two children in 2016 and as many as three since last year. It is also offering incentives to young families and promising improvement in workplace rules and early education.

None have been able to reverse a stark fact: An increasing number of Chinese women don’t want children.

The number of births fell to 10.6 million in 2021, compared with 12 million the year before, according to figures reported Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics. That was fewer even than the number in 1961, when the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong’s economic policy, resulted in widespread famine and death.

For the first time since the Great Leap Forward, China’s population could soon begin to contract. The number of people who died in 2021 — 10.1 million — approached the number of those born, according to the figures announced Monday.

“The year 2021 will go down in Chinese history as the year that China last saw population growth in its long history,” said Wang Feng, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, adding that the 2021 birthrate was lower than the most pessimistic estimates.

Other wealthy societies are experiencing a similar decline, although most experts agree that China’s situation has been complicated by the unintended legacy of the government’s “one child” policy, which from 1980 to 2015 zealously policed women’s reproductive choices.